Chapter Claudia
Claudia
The car is a black Bentley with tinted windows and a driver who opened the door for me without making eye contact.
Rovin sits beside me in the backseat, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating from his body through the space between us.
He hasn't touched me since the study, since his thumb traced my lip and the world narrowed to that single point of contact.
"Where do you live?" I ask.
"I have a house on the main estate that’s been owned by my family for three generations. It’s on the outskirts of the city."
The building the car pulls up to is a Georgian style mansion, beautifully symmetrical. A man in a dark suit opens the door from the inside. He nods to Rovin as we climb the steps.
Inside is enormous. High ceilings with thick coving. A wall of windows overlooks the gardens with fountains throwing moonlight back at us. The furniture looks like it was placed here when the house was built and maintained in such a way that it has never needed to be replaced.
It’s beautiful. But it’s not a home. It’s a fortress. And the man standing behind me has been living in it alone.
He walks me down a hallway lined with art, dark colors on dark canvas, and opens the second door. The room beyond is large and immaculate. A king-sized bed with white linen and a charcoal throw. A wardrobe made of dark wood. An ensuite bathroom with marble counters and a freestanding tub.
"This is temporary," Rovin says from the doorway.
I look at him. "Temporary?"
"While you get used to things."
The way he says it makes my blood thicken in my veins.
There is no question in his voice. It is a statement of fact, delivered with the same calm authority he applies to everything, and it makes me want to cross the room and pull him into this immaculate bed and destroy the careful arrangement of every pristine surface.
"When will we get married?" I ask.
"When I decide."
"Don't I get a say?"
He leans against the doorframe. The posture is almost casual, but his eyes are anything but. They are moving across my face, my throat, the line of my collarbone, with an attention that feels like a physical exploration.
"You chose me," he says. "You walked across a room and told me you wanted permanence and children and a name that couldn't be taken. You chose this. The timeline is mine."
I want to push back. Every instinct trained into me by years of political maneuvering says to negotiate, to assert control, to establish boundaries.
But standing in this room that he prepared for a woman he hadn't yet found, looking at the white roses someone placed here because he told them to, I realize that I don't want to negotiate.
I want to surrender, because surrendering to someone this powerful is its own kind of power.
"All right," I say. "The timeline is yours."
His expression shifts. The control is still there, the composure, the discipline. But underneath it, barely visible, is molten and consuming.
He straightens from the doorframe. "There are toiletries in the bathroom. A phone on the nightstand with a new number. If you need anything tonight, let me know. Don't leave the property without informing me."
"Am I a guest or a prisoner?"
"You're my future wife." He holds my gaze for one more moment, then turns and walks down the hallway. His footsteps are silent on the plush carpet.
I close the door and lean against it, pressing my palms flat against the cool wood and breathe.
I did it. I walked into that dinner and chose the most dangerous man in the room, and he chose me back. Now I am standing in his home with his name hovering over my future like an approaching weather system.
I walk to the window. The garden stretches out below, dark and gleaming with city light. Somewhere out there, my father is drinking in a rented flat and my mother is pretending nothing happened and the journalists are looking for new angles on a story that has already consumed everything I was.
What’s left of me now belongs to Rovin Mostovoi, and yet I feel freer than I have in my whole life.
I pull the phone from the nightstand and turn it over. A new number he said. Now I can have a whole new life.
I set the phone down and walk to the wardrobe.
Inside, hanging in neat rows, are silk blouses, tailored trousers, cashmere sweaters in neutral tones.
Workout clothes. Evening wear. At the bottom, a row of shoes, each pair in a different size.
I run my fingers along the fabrics and feel the weight of what this represents.
He didn't just prepare a room. He prepared a life.
In the bathroom, I find products arranged with military precision. Face cream, body lotion, shampoo and conditioner that smell like summer. A toothbrush still in its packaging. A silk robe hanging from the door, midnight blue, and when I put it on it fits like it was made for me.
I run the bath. The water fills the clawfoot tub, steam curls, and I lower myself into the heat and let it pull the tension from my muscles. I stare at the ceiling and think about Rovin Mostovoi standing in a doorway, telling me the timeline is his, and the look on his face when I agreed.
I close my eyes. The water laps at my collarbone. Somewhere beyond this door, beyond this hallway, in a bedroom I haven't seen yet, the most dangerous man in the city is awake, thinking about me.
I know this the way I know certain truths about weather or gravity. He is awake, and he is thinking about me, and the distance between our doors is a kind of electricity that I can feel humming through the walls.
I sink deeper into the water and smile.